If only the Labour Party could deliver policy the way they delivered the new leader.
It was clean, quick and, for now, it seems to have worked.
The Cabinet reshuffle will make no difference, there is a critical lack of talent, we all know it and putting different namesto different jobs doesn’t hide or disguise that.
There is a very real reason why Hipkins had so many portfolios before he got the big job and that was because no one else was up to them.
I would argue he wasn’t up to them either, which brings me to the genius of the leadership change.
The “I have nothing left I the tank” revelation has thankfully been exposed for what it was: cold, hard polling that showed Jacinda Ardern was toxic to the electorate and Labour had no show unless she went.
How so many fell for it I have no idea, how Labour managed to pull it off so cleanly I have no idea, but the media swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
They swallowed it so wholeheartedly that they tripped over themselves rushing off to write articles not just about burnout but also misogyny.
To be clear, Ardern looked burned out, but I suspect that was from the realisation that the honeymoon was over, she had lost her touch, and by Christmas you could see she looked tired and over it.
It suited her to walk, a number of the more observant had seen it coming, including Kate Hawkesby, who publicly stated Ardern was here for a good time not a long time and the next stop was somewhere like the UN when it all got too sticky.
So they wanted her to go, as luck would have it, she wanted to go. Everyone is happy.
In simple terms, she is a failed leader who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, complete two terms even though she, several times, explained misogyny had nothing to do with it. So why the articles I have no idea.
Keiran McAnulty has stopped mobile clinics because of death threats. That’s nutters, not misogyny.
I had another person who threatened to blow me up get sentenced over the summer. He got home detention. That’s not misogyny.
We live in an ugly, angry world that has little to do with gender but a lot to do with decisions at the highest level, that have impacted people’s lives to an extent that you will get a violent reaction. It doesn’t make it right but it also doesn’t make it anything to do with being a woman.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announces the extension to the fuel tax cut after assessing flood damage in Auckland. Photo / Dean Purcell
Then, after Hipkins arrived uncontested (surely at that point it was obvious it was a pre-arranged stitch-up), the Labour party got their next dose of good news.
The articles titled “who is Chris Hipkins?”.
The answer was: the bloke who made MIQ a hated hot mess; the bloke who tipped the polytech sector on its head; spent millions doing so to no obvious advantage so far; the bloke who didn’t visit a dairy that had been ram-raided until Mark Mitchell embarrassed him into it; the bloke in charge of one of the worst-performing education sectors in the OECD and a truancy rate to match; the bloke who has been present, instrumental if not in charge, of a bunch of decisions that have the government facing defeat this year; and the country in an economic mess.
Sadly, what we got was he likes sausage rolls and painting fences.
The point being he isn’t new, his record speaks for itself.
Then we come to the reset.
So far he has done nothing.
A Cabinet reshuffle doesn’t count, it doesn’t move votes.
If he had come from Mars and said this Labour Party is a shambles and you just watch me sort it out, we might have some expectation.
But given he’s been there every day with every decision, he is going to have to cut, stop, curtail or dump a number of things he presumably, pre the new job, liked. How do you explain that?
And just what are these changes?
And why haven’t we seen any?
Is it possible, there aren’t actually going to be many, if any?
The media merger? Yes, stupid idea, but once again no one cares it doesn’t swing votes.
Three Waters?
How is that possible? Is the most powerful Māori caucus we have ever seen suddenly silenced?
Can Hipkins, and Hipkins alone, curtail spending and thus reduce inflation?
Can he single-handedly save us from recession and the ensuing job layoffs?
Or, is he simply going to do what he’s done for the past five years … hence the panic in the first place to move Ardern on?
